[lit-ideas] SUNDAY POEMS
- From: "Mike Geary" <atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 14 Jun 2009 12:18:50 -0500
THREE LINERS
How many times I've died, I can't recall,
but my body keeps going on,
dragging me through dutiful days.
I wake in a startle in the middle of the night
not knowing why, what was it? All is quiet.
Maybe that. Yes, probably so, the terrible quiet.
My granddaughter looked at the back of my hands,
said: "You're an old man, Granddaddy."
I kissed her head. "Yes," I said, "I'm as old as my Dad."
My long-time lover looked at me quizzically, smiled.
I had said something that surprised her.
OK, then, I'm still alive.
Where I live, live 14 feral cats.
I used to think that something had to be done about that.
Now I feed them.
Straight wind storm. Winds of 80 miles per hour.
Century old oaks weighing 50 tons ripped up
like garden carrots. So puny my emotional life.
If I could talk to Jesus, what a lecture I'd give him.
All anyone wants of life is not to have lived in vain.
Gnosis is the mostest when it doesn't know it knows it.
I watched my mother die ingloriously on a mechanical bed.
She who shaped me so delicately with her rages and humor and curiosity.
I despise that last image of her, being made to breathe, she who was breath to
me.
I watch my children with a guilty conscience.
The oldest turns forty soon. Adults with lives of their own.
I should have done more for them. I should have been someone else.
Mike Geary
Memphis
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